The effects of national environmental information disclosure program on the upgradation of regional industrial structure: Evidence from 286 prefecture-level cities in China

Abstract With more and more serious resource and environment issues in China, the upgradation of industrial structure dominated by heavy industry is key to its sustainable development. In this paper, we try to evaluate the effects of national environmental information disclosure program on regional industrial structure upgradation during 2003 and 2017. Taking the promulgation of Environmental Information Disclosure Measures (for Trail Implementation) in China as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper employs the difference-in-differences (DID) method to conduct an empirical analysis. The results indicate that the disclosure of pollution information transparency index (PITI) at the city level has significantly upgraded local industrial structure and promoted its ecological transformation, and a series of robustness tests have also been conducted to provide further evidences. Moreover, the heterogeneity tests demonstrate that the effects of environmental information disclosure on regional industrial structure vary by government-enterprise relationship and geographical location.